


A Darkness in the Light

by FutureThorn



Series: The Death Of Blue [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Reaction, Sorry guys, he's dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 07:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13266453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FutureThorn/pseuds/FutureThorn
Summary: Team Voltron finishes the battle, but they've lost something precious. Lance is gone, though they don't realize it yet. Team Voltron is down a blue paladin.





	A Darkness in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, here we go. This is the first of the two paths that stem from Lance's Last Stand. This one is where he dies, if you haven't gotten that bit yet. But yes, this is gonna be sad. They're all gonna be sad.
> 
> Don't own it, though that's probably for the best.

“Team Voltron, report,” came the voice of Shiro over their headsets.

“I’m in the main hall with Allura and Coran,” Hunk reported.

“Two clicks off from Hunk, near the kitchens,” Keith replied.

“Over by the side halls, just off from the entrance,” Pidge noted their own location.

For a moment, everyone stayed silent, waiting for Lance to say something. His voice didn’t appear.

Shiro cleared his throat, “Does anyone know where Lance is?”

“Last I knew, he was a couple hundred feet from me. Around a few corners though.”

“Alright, let’s meet up by Pidge and find him together then. I don’t want us seperated again,” Shiro decided. He quickly got unanimous agreement from the rest of the team, all of whom began to make their way to Pidge.

“Is everyone alright?” Coran asked as they all converged on their meeting point.

“I’ll be bruised, but I’m fine,” Hunk assured him.

“Scratches, a few deeper cuts, but alright,” Pidge smiled at the man.

“Same as Hunk,” Shiro replied.

“You know that I just got a few cuts. One is a bit deep though” Keith revealed.

“It looks like we’re all okay for now though. Let’s find Lance,” Shiro ordered, his face determined. He was  _ not _ losing someone else.

It was Pidge who first rounded the corner. Everyone else was a few feet behind them when the green paladin saw the destruction in the entrance hall.

“No,” the word fell from Pidge’s lips, their breath barely carrying the sound at all. “No! Lance!”

Pidge took off in a dead sprint, falling to their knees when they reached the body of their teammate. “Come on, Lance. You’ve gotta wake up for me. Wake up now. Wake up!” The last demand was more akin to a shout than the pleading sentences with which Pidge began, but the tears only flowed down their cheeks faster with every passing moment.

It was at this time that the rest of Team Voltron rounded the corner. Hunk froze dead in his tracks and held his breath, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. Keith moved to join Pidge, kneeling next to them and feeling for Lance’s pulse on autopilot, his shock detaching him from the personal nature of the grief. Allura gasped, covering her mouth with a hand as she turned into the arms of Coran, who merely turned right back into her and held her just as tightly. Shiro just stared. Stared at the body. No, it wasn’t confirmed yet. It couldn’t be just a body. Surely, Lance would wake up in a moment and they’d be able to heal him in a pod.

“Keith,” Shiro barely recognized his own voice as he got the red paladin’s attention. “How is he?”

Keith stared into Shiro’s eyes for a moment before lowering his gaze. He mumbled a sentence that only managed to make Pidge’s sobs stronger.

“No,” Hunk whispered. “No, he can’t be gone! We were supposed to finish this war and go back to Earth and he’d see his siblings and nieces and nephews and parents and--” Hunk choked a little, his tears cutting off the sound of his voice at this point, his shoulders shuddering with the force of his labored breath.

Shiro wrapped his arms around the crying man, his own grief making itself deeply known. A deep breath and Shiro spoke, “I know it hurts, but we need to get out of here. We’re sitting ducks if the Galra return a-and…” he pauses for a moment, turning his head in shame before continuing in a soft and broken tone, “Lance didn’t d-die for us to get caught. He… he died to save us. So we could finish this.”

Pidge wiped tears from their eyes and stared up at their leader for several long moments before nodding. “You’re right. Lance would want us to keep going. Can… can we at least take him with us to bury him?”

“Of course,” Allura steps in, her eyes shining with tears. “Of course. We will give him the honor he deserves.”

“I’ll carry him” Keith volunteers, moving his gaze back to the body of the Blue Paladin. For a moment, there was no sound. The silence was broken by a quiet whisper from Keith, “No. Please, no. No, Lance. No, no, no. You can’t have. No.”

“Keith, are you going to be able to carry him? I can always do it,” Shiro offered, not wanting to have Keith break under the strain of losing Lance.

“No, I can do it. It’s just… that idiot wrote a message! He wrote a message!”

“A message?” Shiro moved closer, the debris and blood marking the floor was disorganized except in one place. Next to Lance.

There, written on the floor, were the letters of a single word that made Shiro choke on his own breath. Written in Lance’s own blood was SORRY. He could only imagine what had been going through the sharpshooter’s mind when he was writing that.

What did “sorry” mean? Sorry I can’t live longer? Sorry I can’t hold them off? Sorry I failed? Sorry I’m dying? Sorry, sorry, sorry. The word played over and over again in Shiro’s mind.

“Oh, Lance, my boy, there was nothing to be sorry for,” Coran’s soft words brought Shiro back to reality, allowing him to realize that the rest of the team had come forward and also seen the message. The team stayed frozen there for a few minutes more before moving back to the Castle of Lions. Each mourned for their friend, their brother, their comrade. They mourned for Lance, who had given it all to save them.

And with the loss of Lance, a spot of darkness emerged in their quest of light in the universe. The team--and universe--would never be the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, that was painful. There'll probably be two or three more fics in The Death Of Blue. Mind you, I'll also be coming out with The Life of Blue as well. Each path will be structured about the same, which should be fun. Each is going to have one more split, but there's probably gonna be a fic between this split and the next, if just to show what's going on.
> 
> Also, thank you to my supportive friends who basically told me that I wasn't going to get away with only writing a little bit of this. You guys are the reason this series is going to be expanding. You know who you are.


End file.
